Gas Tax Just A Drop In CO2 Bucket

In the Swedish Energy Agency vision, turbines replace the need for gas for driving

There's just a dozen years left for Sweden to break its addiction to fossil fuels by 2020, as the Social Democratic party promised back in 2006. In retrospect, that was a wildly optimistic and perhaps even foolhardy promise, as now comes the hard nitty-gritty work to attempt to make transport and energy use clean and green. The government has since changed hands and the Moderates now in control rarely talk about complete "oil independence." Still they went ahead with a hike in gas taxes - yesterday taxes crept upward; regular gas went up 29 öre (just under five US cents) while diesel climbed 55 öre (about 9 cents) - without much protest from the populace.

But while the tax hike is expected to slightly reduce gas purchases, and thus lower CO2 emissions by around 200,000 tons each year, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, that's just a tiny portion of the 60 million tons Swedes emit each year. The wildest and most promising next step would be for Swedes to embrace the Swedish Energy Agency's goal of 30 TWh of wind power to be produced by 2020; that might not completely break oil dependence but would vastly reduce it if the car fleet simultaneously became plug-in hybrid and electric based. Via ::Sveriges Radio (Swedish)